Pioneering journalist Eliza Scidmore was the magazine's first official female writer, photographer, and board member. In the 1890s, the organization that is now the Smithsonian Institution gave Scidmore a Kodak camera to document her travels across India, Japan, China, and the Indonesian island of Java.

In celebration of the magazine's 130th anniversary, National Geographic posted a gallery of photographs that broke new ground from the span of its publication history. Check out images from the first successful expedition to the North Pole, their first wildlife photo, their first camera trap photo, through a "first" from 2017.